The Virtual Moleskine

The iconic Moleskine notebook features an elastic closure; a hard, thick, black cover; slightly rounded corners; a bookmark ribbon; and an expandable inner pocket with a booklet inside containing Moleskine’s history. Inside the front cover, you can fill in your address after “In case of loss, please return to:” and you can value your notebook’s net worth by filling in “As a reward: $___.” I’ve known many Moleskine users, and in every notebook I’ve seen this page is blank.

Maria Sebregondi, the founder of Moleskine, was born and raised in Italy. Her mother worked as an editor and a graphic designer. “I remember, when I was a child, having graphics around all the time,” she said. Sebregondi’s background is primarily in literature and publishing, but, she said, a “kind of visual sensibility was strong in my family.” Moleskine-style notebooks had been produced since the eighteen-fifties, by small French bookbinding companies, and distributed in Paris bookstores; they were used by Picasso, Hemingway, Van Gogh, and the like. (“Moleskine” refers to the traditional oilcloth binding; moleskines are not made out of moles’ skins.) Sebregondi herself remembers using the notebooks while in Paris in the early nineteen-eighties. But, in 1986, the last traditional moleskine manufacturer, a small stationer in Tours, France, closed down. Moleskines went extinct, driven out by cheaper, mass-produced notebooks. In 1995, Sebregondi came across a description of moleskine-style notebooks in a book by the travel writer Bruce Chatwin. Inspired by Chatwin’s devotion—he wrote of trying to persuade a Paris shop to sell him a hundred moleskines at once—Sebregondi approached Modo & Modo, a small Milanese design and publishing firm that she consulted for, with the idea to resurrect this style, and Modo & Modo began producing notebooks. The moleskine was reborn.

Modo & Modo began producing its notebooks in 1997, but the company cultivated the perception that its product had been around forever. The booklet inside each Moleskine described the “history of a legendary notebook” and the story of the Paris booksellers and the famous artists. In 2006, the private-equity firm Syntegra purchased Modo & Modo, and the company changed its name to Moleskine SpA. Sebregondi, who had remained a consultant for the company, joined Moleskine as an executive manager; she’s now the vice-president of brand equity. Under Syntegra’s ownership, Moleskine started expanding its product line, adding myriad variations on the standard notebook, pens, sticky notes, pencil cases, and more. Back in 1997, Moleskine didn’t need a catalog, because it sold one kind of notebook; the Spring 2014 Moleskine catalog is more than two hundred pages long. These days, corporations can team with Moleskine to create custom products for their clientele; to celebrate its six hundredth anniversary, for example, the University of Leipzig collaborated with Moleskine to create a special travel guide. Moleskine has also collaborated with brands such as Lego, The Simpsons, and Star Wars to create limited-editions notebooks and diaries.

The Syntegra purchase also let Moleskine expand its range. You used to have to hunt the notebooks down in indie bookstores and specialty stationery shops. Now, Moleskine has become ubiquitous. Moleskines are sold in ninety-two countries. The company makes the bulk of its revenue by selling its products in Staples, Barnes & Noble, and other major office-supply stores and bookstores. Recently, Moleskine’s branched into direct retail: there are thirty Moleskine-only stores across the world.

Moleskine (pronounced either “MOLE-skin” or “mol-e-SKEEN-a”) doesn’t advertise traditionally or pay for product placement, but it seemingly doesn’t need to. Hannah Horvath wrote in a Moleskine on a recent episode of “Girls”; Lady Gaga posted a picture of her Moleskine on Instagram. Stephan Lee describes a satirical pitch for a reality television show about writers: “Contestants will be housed in a hip but not sterile converted warehouse in Brooklyn. Unlimited supplies of coffee, dark liquor, cigarettes, subversive texts, and Moleskines will be provided.” Moleskine notebooks are also one of the hundred-and-thirty-six products and concepts listed in “Stuff White People Like,” along with kitchen gadgets and Oscar parties. Speaking to the Yale Political Union in 2010, Karl Rove quipped, “I have never before been in a group that was so obviously and clearly pretentious. Do you know how I knew it was pretentious? Moleskines!”

Even though Moleskine is well-known as a notebook, it’s not hard to understand why the company would want to branch out. The stationery-goods industry isn’t exactly fast-growing in this age of Facebook, Twitter, and texting. Staples, the largest office-supply store in the U.S., announced in March that it would close more than two hundred of its brick-and-mortar stores. Kate’s Paperie, a luxury paper-goods store with a rabid cult following, has reduced its storefronts from five to one.

For the past two hundred years, Crane & Co., the Massachusetts-based stationery company, has been supplying the U.S. government with the paper blend used to print dollars. The U.S. Mint used to be a steady but minor side gig, but when technology threatened products like company letterheads, Crane’s sideline became its main business. The company expanded into international currency, supplying not only raw paper but finished money for Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. Crane may still be known for its wedding invitations, but more than eighty per cent of its revenue comes from its currency business.

Moleskine has begun to market itself as being at the forefront of the “analog-digital continuum.” In 2013, it subtly revised the story in the booklet that comes with its products: “Moleskine accompanies the creative and imaginative professions of our time: it represents, around the world, a symbol of contemporary nomadism, closely connected with the digital world.” This has a very utopian ring, but it’s sort of hard to tell what exactly it means.

Sebregondi tries to explain. “If you look at our iconic little black notebook, it’s very compatible in terms of aesthetics with the small high-tech objects we are surrounded with,” she says. And, apparently, Moleskine does appeal to some members of the techie crowd. Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told Marketplace that younger, hipper tech executives often show up at meetings jotting notes in a Moleskine instead of using a tablet. Moleskine now makes covers in which you can swaddle your small, high-tech objects. (The legendary smartphone case of Hemingway and Van Gogh?) The company has also partnered with Evernote, the organizational app, to create notebooks with a digital aspect: you can scan a picture of your handwritten notes and upload it into Evernote.

In April, 2013, Moleskine went public in Italy, the first I.P.O. to enter the Milan bourse in over a year. It positioned itself not as a stationery brand but as a luxury-goods company—the reasoning being that “luxury goods” sounds much better to investors than “stationery.” A Bain study earlier this year found that the worldwide luxury-goods market has nearly tripled over the past twenty years. Moleskine knew that it had strong brand recognition and a loyal fan base. Writing at Quartz, Zachary Seward pointed out that, in the prospectus for its I.P.O., Moleskine included a little chart to show that it identified itself with culture rather than commerce, and with announcing a user’s identity rather than serving a functional purpose.

Moleskine opened with shares priced at over two euros, and initially its shares hovered around this value. But Moleskine’s share price has generally been declining, especially over the past few months, and the stock is now at a little above half of its original level. “Frankly, I would not classify Moleskine as a luxury-goods stock,” Mario Ortelli, a luxury analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, told me. “The brand is the physical product, the notebook.” Moleskine has enormous margins—it doesn’t cost much to make a notebook—but Ortelli said that’s because it has brand power as stationery; it’s tough to translate this to other items. “When you launch new products, it’s difficult to have credibility,” he said.” He added, “I don’t know, for example, how much credibility a Moleskine watch can have.”

Moleskine remains confident that the company will attract customers with its lifestyle-oriented pitch. “When you look at our growth rates, we compare very favorably to, even better than, luxury stocks,” Arrigo Berni, Moleskine’s C.E.O., told Bloomberg. “Obviously, we don’t just sell products—we don’t just sell notebooks. We also sell a story.”

Moleskine is very good at telling stories. The question is whether people are interested in hearing this new one. The company’s revenue continues to grow each year. Customers remain willing to buy Moleskine notebooks. They are also willing to engage with the brand online—but only to a point. Moleskine has close to two hundred thousand “likes” on Facebook, but when the Web site runs “creativity contests,” asking users to upload pictures of their notebooks, it typically receives only a hundred or so entries. In March, 2014, Moleskine introduced the myCloud accessories, a line of utility-chic travel bags and wallets with elastic band closures that mimic the notebook’s style. To promote the gear, Moleskine launched “My Analog Cloud”, a game in which you choose from an array of digital belongings to “pack” an online “bag.” Based on the objects you select and the bag you choose to tote them, Moleskine will divine your “personal profile.” According to Moleskine, you can be anything: a “Writing Flaneur,” a “Supervising Coordinator,” a “Gambling Analog,” a “Curating Nomadic.” “Today,” Sebregondi told me, “I was a Utopian Nonconformist.”